Few days I ago I came back home from very nice trip to Russia a country with the largest amount of chess Grandmasters in the world. I was dreaming about playing strong tournament there for many years and finally this dream came true and I participated in the Chigorin Memorial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chigorin_Memorial) in beautiful city of Saint Petersburg.

I started very well, in the 3rd round I faced the former FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman and chose my secret weapon 1.f4 and managed to even put some pressure. The game finally ended in a draw.

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photo by Sergey Sorokhtin

I played few more famous Grandmasters in this tournament but somehow I couldn’t break through but I beat all weaker players so with the score 5.5/9 I gained some rating points which is always a positive thing 🙂

Before each round I was walking a lot around the city, there were many nice things to see and I would certainly recommend everyone to visit this place and I hope I’ll be there again in the future.

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…and here’s even a little video I recorded there. Maybe at some point I will start making vlogs 😛